Hillary Clinton’s Popular Vote Lead Could Blow Out To More Than 2 Million

The Electoral College exists to insulate American democracy from the tyranny of the majority. Of course, it was conceptualised in a very different time, and many argue it unfairly weighs the votes of many Americans in regional areas in the country’s interior over those in cities. A quick scan of demographics leads one to believe it unfairly prioritises the white vote.

But reforming the electoral college is a question for the future – for now, Democrats have to grin and bear it. But it might hurt a lot more than expected: the remaining votes to count are largely in blue state California, and some experts project this could blow out her lead in the popular vote to more than 2 million.

If that’s the case, it’ll be a bigger disparity between electoral votes and the popular vote than with the Al Gore / George W. Bush election. And people are still furious about that one.

And always a reminder that Trump is a somewhat recent fan of the Electoral College.

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012

So there’s obviously hope for the anti-Trumpers going into 2020. We’ll all have a much better picture of what went so dramatically wrong for them, but it’s clear that something definitely did not connect in the post-industrial, economically depressed Midwest, which went hard for Obama in 2008 and 2012, but swung to Trump this time around. There’s a rich vein of electoral votes there which Clinton missed hard.

But the way to do that is to organise and fight. Not so much this:

The Electoral College electors are not going to do that. 

But there’s definitely, definitely a very strong base for the Democrats to mobilise next time around.